ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A former attorney was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison for conspiring to launder more than $2 million dollars derived from a business email compromise scheme and for attempting to launder funds he believed to be proceeds from alien smuggling and firearms trafficking. This case was investigated by special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Washington, D.C.

According to court documents, from at least March 2013 to February 2017, Raymond Juiwen Ho, 48, of Vienna, engaged in a large-scale money laundering scheme that resulted in millions of dollars being moved through bank accounts (some of which were attorney trust accounts) that Ho or his co-conspirators controlled. Specifically, between July and November 2014, Ho participated in a conspiracy in which co-conspirators sent emails from compromised or imitation accounts that duped victims into transferring money to accounts controlled by Ho and others. Ho then laundered these stolen funds, moving them through and to accounts located in the United States and abroad. Ho, who recruited others to aid his laundering activities, laundered more than $2 million in unlawfully obtained funds.

Ho engaged in his money laundering business despite multiple instances of banks closing his accounts due to fraud and inquiries by law enforcement. Eventually, in November 2015, HSI initiated an operation in which undercover HSI special agents sought Ho’s assistance in moving the proceeds of human smuggling and firearms trafficking between bank accounts located in the United States and overseas. Ho engaged in four such transactions between December 2015 and June 2016, involving more than $175,000 he believed to be the proceeds of illegal smuggling and trafficking activity.

Throughout the criminal conduct described above, Ho was a practicing attorney for an intellectual property law firm based in Washington, D.C. As part of this case, he has surrendered his bar licenses from Georgia and the District of Columbia.